Abstrato

Prognostic value of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma: A meta-analysis

Bin Yu, Zhonghua Li, Qingping Zheng, Zhanxiong Luo, Jing Li, Yuanyuan Zhou, Leili Wang, Chanjuan He, Fengrong Shi, Rensheng Wang

This study was aimed to investigate the prognostic significance of Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio (NLR) for patients with Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (NPC) by the analytic approach of meta-analysis. We searched databases of PubMed, Emabse and Web of Science and included 6 studies with 3,469 patients in the meta-analysis. All included studies were from China. The association between NLR and four end-points events, Overall Survival (OS), Progression-Free Survival (PFS), Disease-Specific Survival (DSS) and Distant Metastasis-Free Survival (DMFS) was evaluated by using STATA version 12.0. Elevated NLR was associated with poor OS (HR=1.73, 95% CI: 1.37-2.13, p<0.001), PFS (Hazard Ratio (HR) =1.57, 95% CI: 1.19-2.09, p=0.002), DSS (HR=1.41, 95% CI: 1.19-1.66, p<0.001) and DMFS (HR=1.91 with 95% CI: 1.35-2.71, p<0.001). Furthermore, there was no significant heterogeneity and publication bias for all analyses in our study, indicating the robustness and credibility of this metaanalysis. Our study showed that elevated NLR was a significant biomarker for poor OS, PFS, DSS and DMFS in NPC. NLR was a potential valuable marker for NPC treatment.